Customizing Default Database Labels & List Names

By defaultTrail Blazerhas certain list & label names (i.e. voters or donors) throughout the application depending on what version you’re using (political or nonprofit). You may want to change some of these labels to something that makes more sense to your organization. For instance, it’s quite common to change the list for ‘donors’ to something more generic like ‘contacts’, OR you may want to use a field like ‘Social Security Number’ to track something else like ‘Password Number’.

This article walks through the steps to perform this task, and shows all the customizable fields at your disposal. Note that these changes will affect all database users with access to your database, and it requires appropriateadmin security accessto accomplish this task.

Tip:There are two ways to change field names. One is by right-clicking on them (in areas of the application that support this) and the other is from the ‘Custom Labels’ list under the Application Menu. Both are covered below.

As of the time this article was written there were 94 labels that can be customized:

Any cell that’s green allows you to double-click in it to overwrite the value. In this example I changed the label for ‘Donor’ to ‘Contacts’ since I’m tracking more than just donors in the database (i.e. Prospects, Volunteers, Alumni, etc.).

After making your change(s) you’ll need to click [Save] or [Save and Close] in the bottom-right.

Important:When changing labels via the ‘custom labels’ list it *requires* that you log out and log back in for the changes to take effect. When changing them from within a contact’s record card, it requires that you open a new search window for the changes to take effect.

After making your changes in the Customize Labels list, close down the Trail Blazer application by clicking the red [x] in the upper-right, and then click [OK].

Navigate to the location(s) where you made changes to confirm they look how you want. In this example my main ‘Donors’ list is now called ‘Contacts’.

To change a label using the right-click method, you have two options:

-From within a contact’s record card

-From the search panel

For this example I used the option to change it from within a contact’s record card.

Searchfor and open any contact (donor/voter) in your database. I used my own record for this example, you could just as well run an open search and load the top 100.

Navigate to the section that has the field you want to rename – (NOT ALL FIELDS ARE CUSTOMIZABLE) – in this example I went to the General > Profile sub-tab which has a default field for Social Security #.

Right-clickon the field label that you want to rename and select ‘Rename Label…’.

Create a new name for your label and click [OK]. In this example I renamed ‘Social Security #’ to ‘Passport Number’.

The label will now reflect the change.

*Mostof the labels that are used to collect data on a contact record can be queried by back in the Contacts (Voters/Donors) list.

You can also add them into your reports as columns by viaFormatting. The system will rename the column to whatever you called it, my example is below.

Img 1 of 2 – Formatting in the Column using the New Custom Label Name

Img 2 of 2 – How the Column Looks in the Grid

The Related Resources below link to a variety of similar articles and videos.